[quote author=norma427 link=topic=6112.msg242531#msg242531 date=1363049099How would you describe the crusts of the frozen HRI pizzas you had? I am still interested in really how those crusts are in texture and taste.

Norma, I know you were asking Pete, but I had some over the weekend and can share my thoughts. The crust is very oily and very flaky. I could see visble flaky layers in the dough. Some of these layers "bent up" along the rim of the crust, almost as if the layers were all formed parallel to each other and then the edges were bent up to form the rim. Also, not only were the layers visible, but I could even peel them apart -- so I know I'm not just making this up.

The dough reminds me kind of like phyllo actually.

I'm not sure how the layers get in there. I know Pete mentioned earlier in the thread that the dough wasn't laminated. I'm not sure how else they could get the dough like that though. Maybe the hot pressing has something to do with it?

CDNpielover,

Thank you for explaining how your crusts were on the frozen HRI pizzas you ate. I really can’t understand how they could get like that either.

After I saw that picture of the crust with the tomato puree applied on facebook I thought about your post where you said there wasn’t much sauce on your frozen pizzas. I also suspect it is true that the pizzas baked in one of HRI’s pizzerias would have more sauce applied. I can understand that the equipment has to work almost flawlessly to be able to make all of those pizzas. I sure would really like to be able to see how that happens so fast. How do the members of this forum then decide how much sauce to apply if anyone wants to make an attempt on an HRI pizza?

I have never had an HRI pizza from one of its pizzerias, so I don't know how much sauce they use. It also depends on whether you are trying to emulate one of the pizzas made at an HRI pizzeria or one of the HRI frozen pizzas. Since the best data that I could find was for the HRI frozen pizzas, I tried to replicate one of their frozen pizzas so that it could be compared with a real HRI frozen pizza. I think I would use around 4-5 ounces of sauce for a clone of a 12" frozen HRI pizza. My practice in dealing with matters like this is to start with the known pizza weight, assume a weight loss during baking, add that to the known pizza weight to come up with an "unbaked" weight, and then play around with the amounts of the ingredients until they equal that "unbaked" weight. For example, for a 12" HRI clone of a pepperoni pizza, I would use 15 ounces of dough, 10 ounces of mozzarella cheese (with the profile mentioned earlier), 4 ounces of sauce, and 1 ounce of pepperoni slices. The pepperoni pizza is easier to work with because there are only 14 slices of pepperoni on each 12" HRI frozen pepperoni pizza. That number never changes. Also, 14 slices of pepperoni, almost without regard to brand, weigh about 1 ounce. Of course, there can be exceptions to this, such as the Margherita brand of coarse grind pepperoni. The above combination of ingredients seems to best fit the HRI Nutrition Facts based on my analysis of the Nutrition Facts.

Keep in mind though, I am a sauce lover and I'm sure I go a little heavier than HRI does. I understand that when you and Peter are cloning you like to get as close as possible. And that is the great thing about all of the cloned recipes...it can get someone who has never even had "xyz" pizza very close. And then one is free to tweak it however they like if they choose.

I have never had an HRI pizza from one of its pizzerias, so I don't know how much sauce they use. It also depends on whether you are trying to emulate one of the pizzas made at an HRI pizzeria or one of the HRI frozen pizzas. Since the best data that I could find was for the HRI frozen pizzas, I tried to replicate one of their frozen pizzas so that it could be compared with a real HRI frozen pizza. I think I would use around 4-5 ounces of sauce for a clone of a 12" frozen HRI pizza. My practice in dealing with matters like this is to start with the known pizza weight, assume a weight loss during baking, add that to the known pizza weight to come up with an "unbaked" weight, and then play around with the amounts of the ingredients until they equal that "unbaked" weight. For example, for a 12" HRI clone of a pepperoni pizza, I would use 15 ounces of dough, 10 ounces of mozzarella cheese (with the profile mentioned earlier), 4 ounces of sauce, and 1 ounce of pepperoni slices. The pepperoni pizza is easier to work with because there are only 14 slices of pepperoni on each 12" HRI frozen pepperoni pizza. That number never changes. Also, 14 slices of pepperoni, almost without regard to brand, weigh about 1 ounce. Of course, there can be exceptions to this, such as the Margherita brand of coarse grind pepperoni. The above combination of ingredients seems to best fit the HRI Nutrition Facts based on my analysis of the Nutrition Facts.

I understand you are always precise in all that you do. Thanks for posting how much the dough, mozzarella, sauce and pepperoni should weigh for a 12” frozen HRI pizza. I would rather emulate one of the pizzas made at an HRI pizzeria, but you numbers are helpful.

Norma, I know you were asking Pete, but I had some over the weekend and can share my thoughts. The crust is very oily and very flaky. I could see visble flaky layers in the dough. Some of these layers "bent up" along the rim of the crust, almost as if the layers were all formed parallel to each other and then the edges were bent up to form the rim. Also, not only were the layers visible, but I could even peel them apart -- so I know I'm not just making this up.

The dough reminds me kind of like phyllo actually.

I'm not sure how the layers get in there. I know Pete mentioned earlier in the thread that the dough wasn't laminated. I'm not sure how else they could get the dough like that though. Maybe the hot pressing has something to do with it?

CDNpielover,

HRI uses hot dough presses both in its stores and in its frozen pizza operations. At HRI's frozen pizza facilities, the rims of the pizzas are automatically formed as pressure (600-800 pounds) is applied to the dough ball for about 10 seconds. The rims are rounded, not pleated as is done by hand in the HRI pizzerias. Heat is also applied to the pressed skins and that helps set the crust somewhat but not much more than that. The crusts are also docked to minimize bubbling in the crust. I have read that in its pizzerias, HRI workers put the pressed crusts in a rack for about 15 minutes to "proof". If so, this suggests that there is still fermentation occurring in the crust. I don't think that pressing is the reason for the layering effect. Pizza operators routinely use presses, with or without heat, to make pizzas and the crusts are not flaky. A well known user of presses is California Pizza Kitchen (see video below). Costco also uses presses, and its pizza crusts are not flaky.

I think that the layering effect is primarily due to the way that the dough is made, and, more specifically, the way that the ingredients are sequenced when making the dough. The bowls of the mixers used by HRI to make its frozen pizzas are "400- 500-lb bowls", so their mixers must be serious equipment. To replicate the processes that HRI uses in a home environment, I think I would use techniques such as are used to make pie dough but using oil rather than solid fats. I have been playing around with some ways of doing this but it is too early to say what, if anything, might do the job in a home setting. There may also be ancillary methods that have to be used even if a workable dough making method is achieved. An example might be letting the docked formed skin to proof for a while before dressing and baking. Bake temperatures and times may be other factors.

Sat. night I had one of those little 5 or 6in jobbies, plain cheese because I needed a refresher on the crust taste...anyway, I'm just not seeing any of this "lamination" that's been being mentioned.

Bob,

Yes, I did. But it wasn't the type of layering that you might get, say, in a cracker-style crust. It is more like a pie crust in my opinion, with a fairly dense crumb but with a flakiness when you try to peel it apart. Except for the rim of an HRI crust, which can be quite hard, the crust inside of the rim can be more tender.

Lamination suggests that there are distinct layers that are superimposed on each other, either by physical placement of sheets on top of each other or through the use of folding methods. A hot press does none of that.

I use a pie dough recipe of my mom's that uses lots of regular vegetable oil. I think it calls for the oil not to be stirred into the water and think there is also cold water used. I have to look up that recipe and see what happens when I make another attempt on an HRI pizza. The crust on that pie dough does get very flaky even if it is rolled out. It needs to be rolled between wax paper though.

I use a pie dough recipe of my mom's that uses lots of regular vegetable oil. I think it calls for the oil not to be stirred into the water and think there is also cold water used. I have to look up that recipe and see what happens when I make another attempt on an HRI pizza. The crust on that pie dough does get very flaky even if it is rolled out. It needs to be rolled between wax paper though.

Norma,

Making oil-based pie crusts has long been the province of people with health and nutrition concerns. Remembering this, I found one of my old health food cookbooks that had a recipe for an oil-based crust. The recipe calls for sifting all of the dry ingredients and adding a mixture of the oil and water into the dry ingredients, using a fork to combine everything.

In HRI's frozen food facilities, the flour goes directly into its mixer bowls, without sifting beyond the sifting that is done at the miller's facilities. I would think that it would be overly energy intensive and costly for HRI to cool down the water for its dough when they are making over a million pizzas a month. According to one of the most recent articles on the HRI frozen pizza operation, HRI kneads the dough for nine minutes. That is not a lot for the dough batch sizes they are making. So, like a pie dough you don't want to over mix the dough.

Making oil-based pie crusts has long been the province of people with health and nutrition concerns. Remembering this, I found one of my old health food cookbooks that had a recipe for an oil-based crust. The recipe calls for sifting all of the dry ingredients and adding a mixture of the oil and water into the dry ingredients, using a fork to combine everything.

In HRI's frozen food facilities, the flour goes directly into its mixer bowls, without sifting beyond the sifting that is done at the miller's facilities. I would think that it would be overly energy intensive and costly for HRI to cool down the water for its dough when they are making over a million pizzas a month. According to one of the most recent articles on the HRI frozen pizza operation, HRI kneads the dough for nine minutes. That is not a lot for the dough batch sizes they are making. So, like a pie dough you don't want to over mix the dough.

Peter

Peter,

I didn’t know making oil-based pie crust has long been the province of people with health and nutrition concerns. I think HRI’s method at their frozen food facilities could be something like the recipe you looked up in your old health cookbooks. I also had read that recent article that HRI kneads the dough for nine minutes. I agree that isn’t a lot of time to mix for those large batches. Of course, I really don’t think we are trying to make a HRI crust as flaky as a regular pie crust, but since I never tasted a real HRI pizza crust I really don’t know.

I posted my mom’s pie crust recipe at Reply 13 http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,19002.msg185689.html#msg185689 and my mom’s recipe was modified a little from a Betty Crocker recipe and might be like ones that you have looked at recently. That seems to be a lot of vegetable oil for the amount of flour to me. Chau also said he liked that pie crust recipe modified in the post before mine. I never really used cold water out of the fridge, but just cold tap water. That method calls for sifting flour too, but don’t think there really needs to be any sifting of flours the way flours are milled today. The salt, water and flour are added to the flour mixture.

In Loo’s opening post at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,6112.0.html and from the Nutrition Facts of an HRI pizza the yeast is listed above the salt and you recently I think posted that more than 2% IDY could be used. I just wonder then how the dough could be cold fermented for 2-3 days in the HRI pizzerias, without multiple punch downs, unless they keep the dough really cold, or the oil helps to retard the dough.

Your mother's pie crust recipe that you referenced essentially looks like this from a baker's percent standpoint, although the actual baker's percents will depend on how the flour is measured out volumetrically:

If one were to play around with the above hydration and oil amounts, and add some yeast and double the amount of salt, you would essentially have an HRI type of dough. Unfortunately, there is no way of calculating the hydration of the HRI dough used to make their frozen pizzas. In part, I believe that that is because there is an error in the HRI Nutrition Facts. If I am correct on this, it could be that that error was used to do other calculations that are now reflected in the Nutrition Facts.

In Loo’s opening post at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,6112.0.html and from the Nutrition Facts of an HRI pizza the yeast is listed above the salt and you recently I think posted that more than 2% IDY could be used. I just wonder then how the dough could be cold fermented for 2-3 days in the HRI pizzerias, without multiple punch downs, unless they keep the dough really cold, or the oil helps to retard the dough.

After mixing, the pizza dough is allowed to ferment in tubs containing 40-lb batches. The company likes the unique flavor that natural fermentation produces. Tubs are cleaned and sanitized between batches.

“Our dough is given the time to develop flavor naturally,” Mr. Perrino said. “No additives are used to speed up the process. We follow ‘old world' methods that rely on time and natural fermentation.”

After the proper amount of floor time, the dough is dumped into a Benier bread system that divides and rounds individual dough pieces and puts them through a period of intermediate proofing. From the proofer, the dough balls travel along an overhead delivery conveyor into the pressing room. A chute sends the balls to a shallow bin, and an operator manually places the balls on the conveyor leading to the presses. Company engineers are working on an automatic placement system to be installed later.

Dough balls travel through one of two hot crust presses. When Home Run Inn first automated its pizza crust process in 1990, it switched from manual stretching to hot press processing and achieved a threefold increase in throughput. The dough is formed in the cavity of the press and enough heat is applied to “set” the shape. The company anticipates installing a third press within a few months.

Formed crusts then leave the presses and enter a impingement-style forced-air oven. A short bake stabilizes the crust, which is still warm as it continues into the topping room. Here a series of depositors, custom-configured into three lanes, apply the proper proportions of sauce, cheese, sausage and other condiments. Operators stand alongside the topping lanes to visually inspect each pizza for proper coverage.

As I read the above quoted material, I conclude that the fermentation is an ambient temperature fermentation, not a cold fermentation.

Now, if we fast forward to the latest article we know of that describes what appears to be the current HRI frozen pizza operations, at http://digital.bnpmedia.com/publication/?i=37488&p=14, you will see a discussion at pages 24 and 26 (of the article) that essentially describes the dough management as follows: 1) Make the dough as described at page 26, 2) put the dough into to the dough chunker to form 40-lb blocks, 3) divide the dough into pieces and form them into round balls, 4) manually check the weights of the dough balls, 5) rack the dough balls, and 6) form the dough balls into skins using the dough presses.

Where is the fermentation step(s)? We really don't know. Maybe it is between steps 5 and 6 described above. And I believe docking takes place after step 6.

Now, to answer your specific question about how HRI manages its dough in its pizzerias with the high amounts of yeast as we have been discussing, it is possible that HRI uses less yeast for the dough for its pizzerias than it uses to make its frozen dough. I'm not sure where I read it, but I believe that the dough for the HRI pizzerias is made at a facility that is separate from the frozen pizza facilities (although the frozen pizza facilities make the sauce and processes the cheese and sausage for the entire HRI operations, including the pizzerias). However, even if I am wrong about the amount of yeast used for the dough for the HRI pizzerias, my cold fermentation tests show that even with 2.5% IDY, the dough during cold fermentation does not explode out of its storage container. The dough will rise fairly quickly as it cools down in the refrigerator, and may even double or triple in volume (after about 8 hours in my refrigerator), after about a day of cold fermentation everything comes to a halt, and the dough no longer rises and just sits there. I believe that the high amount of oil is at least partly responsible for the orderly behavior of the dough. The dough is firm to the touch, not soft and billowy that it tempts you to want to punch it down. You can read more about how the dough is handled in HRI's pizzerias in the article excerpted at Reply 6 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,6009.msg51590.html#msg51590.

I'm not sure where I read it, but I believe that the dough for the HRI pizzerias is made at a facility that is separate from the frozen pizza facilities (although the frozen pizza facilities make the sauce and processes the cheese and sausage for the entire HRI operations, including the pizzerias).

My plant basically produces all of our raw ingredients for our restaurants out of the same location and then half of the plant is support for restaurants and the other half is for frozen pizza production.

I also found an older article through a library search that I couldn't cite, but when HRI opened up one of its frozen production facilities, the article said:

The restaurant commissary will be relocated to the new production facility. All of the raw products are prepared at the commissary and trucked to the three restaurants for assembly.

I would think that HRI would want to have a separation of its two businesses so that the pizzeria side is not subjected to the same kind of governmental and regulatory scrutiny as the frozen pizza side.

This is from an Ultrathin HRI, and you can clearly see separate layers. If your frozen HRI pizzas don't cook up this way, you're doing it wrong or just haven't noticed.

Thanks Garvey, I believe that does remind me of what I have seen from the "ultra thin" HRI frozen pizza.Just not seeing that at all on their regular crust. Maybe they selling 'ol Bob some damaged goods....

Are you seeing that same pronounced "layers" on their regular style, such as the 2 pies that Peter just recently baked and reported only a pie crust like "flakiness"?

What CDNpielover said. Same dough in the regular--just more of it. And it absolutely flakes up like that.

Believe me, a frozen HRI is actually a little tricky to cook up properly. But when you give it a long enough bake, you will be rewarded for your patience. Anything less than correct, and it's gummy and not so great and certainly not flaky .

BTW, Bob, I saw earlier that you were lamenting a lack of sauce (or was that someone else?). I found that odd, because HRI is among the sauciest pies available in the frozen aisle. Ultrathin is even saucier, relative to the crust thickness, etc. That being said, I do sometimes get a drier one or a few dry ones that were made on the same date. But the really saucy ones are more the norm... in my experience, anyway. (And we pretty much have had HRI weekly for the past eight years or so, since distribution began down South. If I don't make pizza, we never order out: we have HRI.)